Probably one of the best free keyword research tools for SEO available online is Google’s own keyword tool. Just enter one keyword or phrase per line to see related keywords. You can apply different filters like broad, exact or phrase match types. You can also select different languages and countries to search for keyword phrases.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool also has a feature to show keyword ideas and statistics for desktop and laptop devices and different types of mobile devices (WAP, mobile devices with full internet browsers).

In keyword ideas tab you will see columns like Keyword, Competition, Global Monthly Searches, Global Local Searches, Ad Share, Google Search Network, Search Share, Approximate CPC (cost-per-click bid), Local Search Trends graph and Extracted From Webpage. I suggest you to enable all available columns by checking on Columns button on the right hand side:

After you finish you can download search results in CSV format. I highly recommend to use Google Keyword Tool because it’s free tool from Google and it has all features that are needed for keyword research.

]]>http://mikeshakin.com/seo/ultimate-list-of-42-free-keyword-research-tools.html/feed5 Effective Methods to Deal With Blogging Fatiguehttp://mikeshakin.com/blogging/5-effective-methods-to-deal-with-blogging-fatigue.html
http://mikeshakin.com/blogging/5-effective-methods-to-deal-with-blogging-fatigue.html#commentsFri, 10 Aug 2012 06:02:21 +0000adminhttp://mikeshakin.com/blogging/5-effective-methods-to-deal-with-blogging-fatigue.htmlBloggers are passionate people, who want to share information, thoughts or new ideas through their very own space - their blog. They write informative or entertaining stuff, invite people to read and share reviews, join blogger communities, share their blogs to reader communities and enjoy excellent remarks from people.

But, things are not always the same. Writing is such a task that takes a lot of patience and newness is always demanded. If fresh content is not available for writing and writer’s mind cannot think of any fresh topic to express his/her views, there emerges a situation of writer’s blockage, which certainly leads to blogging fatigue.

Blogging burnout syndrome is the situation, where blogger suffers through a particular state of mind. He/she doesn’t find writing for blogs, posting them on the page and sharing thoughts interesting anymore. This situation can become a source of depression, if not treated well. Hence, the blogger has to make sure that complete precautionary measures are taken in this series. Some of the major things that a blogger can do to overcome the annoying situation of fatigue include following.

1. Take a short time break from blogging

Sometimes, working on a blog on routine basis becomes the reason behind monotony. It creates the vicious circles of disinterest in the bloggers. To deal with such types of blogging fatigue, it is necessary to take a short break and get unplugged for few months. This acts as perfect source of rejuvenation to the customers.

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]]>http://mikeshakin.com/blogging/5-effective-methods-to-deal-with-blogging-fatigue.html/feed4 Factors for Long-Term Success with Niche Marketinghttp://mikeshakin.com/seo/4-factors-for-long-term-success-with-niche-marketing.html
http://mikeshakin.com/seo/4-factors-for-long-term-success-with-niche-marketing.html#commentsMon, 19 Mar 2012 06:30:11 +0000adminhttp://mikeshakin.com/seo/4-factors-for-long-term-success-with-niche-marketing.htmlNiche marketing is extremely useful way to surpass your competitors. There are a lot of different niche markets but it is very important to find the one that will offer you the most chance for success because most of them are not profitable enough.

If you are going to spend your time and money you need to figure out which niche to target. I’ll describe 4 most important factors for long-term success with niche marketing.

1. Motivation

If you are not interested in niche don’t even choose it because you will not be able to update your site on a regular basis during two or three years or longer without motivation.

Think about niche. Is it really interesting? Will chosen niche be profitable?

Sometimes it may look like you have a great motivation and you may feel like you can target any niche you want. Wait for a few days and see what will happen. If you are not that motivated and don’t even think about this niche - think about something else.

Finding right marketing niche always takes time. It’s much better to think and analyze before than wasting your time and money on niche that will not be profitable.

]]>http://mikeshakin.com/seo/4-factors-for-long-term-success-with-niche-marketing.html/feed7 Tips for Creating Proposals that Sellhttp://mikeshakin.com/seo/7-tips-for-creating-proposals-that-sell.html
http://mikeshakin.com/seo/7-tips-for-creating-proposals-that-sell.html#commentsTue, 20 Sep 2011 18:36:02 +0000adminhttp://mikeshakin.com/seo/7-tips-for-creating-proposals-that-sell.htmlUnless you a unique and exceptionally rare kind of professional or work in a very exotic market niche with little to no competition, you are most likely to be one of many individuals struggling for their share of the predominantly buyer’s market.

That said, you need to face the inevitable: every contract and every deal you plan on be closing will be - to this or that extent - the product of self-promotion, your presentation skills and, ultimately, your ability to put yourself into your clients’ shoes and give them exactly what they are looking for.To help you get up to speed faster, I’d like to share these tips on creating proposals that will really set you and your offer aside:

Your primary objective is to demonstrate your vision of the final result that meets the client’s expectations and needs. And since it’s a business proposal, don’t build up the tension and leave the best for the last page - otherwise, there is a pretty good chance your client-to-be will put it away after skimming through the first dozen lines. Once you’ve shown your understanding of the purpose of the client’s project, you can move one to the next level and detail the means of reaching this goal.

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]]>http://mikeshakin.com/seo/7-tips-for-creating-proposals-that-sell.html/feed10 Basic SEO Tips That Always Worked For Mehttp://mikeshakin.com/seo/10-basic-seo-tips.html
http://mikeshakin.com/seo/10-basic-seo-tips.html#commentsTue, 30 Aug 2011 07:08:43 +0000adminhttp://mikeshakin.com/seo/10-basic-seo-tips.htmlSEO is constantly changing but some basic things are always the same. Here is my list of basic search optimization tips that always were effective for me.

1. Content is the most effective linkbuilding tool

Your posts should be interesting, useful and unique. You can get tons of quality backlinks from hundreds and thousands of sites absolutely for free only by writing posts. Otherwise your visitors will not subscribe to your RSS feed, Twitter or Facebook updates and they will never come back or even remember your site or blog. Writing useful texts takes a lot of time but it worth it.

2. Update your website on a regular basis

You can experiment with updating your blog and find which way works for you. For example I feel comfortable to write posts on my blogs about 2-3 times a week.

3. Write posts only when you are motivated

That’s my golden rule. I write blog posts only when a feel that motivation for doing that. If I don’t have motivation I don’t write anything. It’s much better to do something else - go for a walk, read websites or magazines, watch movie, listen to the music, etc.

4. Use relevant keyword in meta tags, title and first sentence of blog post

When writing a blog post always use relevant keywords in it’s first sentence and title. Also use it in meta tags such as title, description and keywords. That way your post will become relevant to your keywords and you’ll get better rankings in search engines.

]]>http://mikeshakin.com/seo/10-basic-seo-tips.html/feed10 Tips to Get More Retweets on Twitterhttp://mikeshakin.com/twitter/10-tips-to-get-more-retweets-on-twitter.html
http://mikeshakin.com/twitter/10-tips-to-get-more-retweets-on-twitter.html#commentsThu, 10 Feb 2011 15:23:42 +0000adminhttp://mikeshakin.com/twitter/10-tips-to-get-more-retweets-on-twitter.htmlEveryone knows Twitter. Twitter is a popular social service for bloggers and webmasters. They use it to bring more traffic, RSS subscribers and followers to their websites.

A retweet on Twitter allows you to share your posts with current followers and their friends. If your content gets a lot of retweets it goes far beyond your follower pool. In other words, if your blog posts gets a lot of retweets you can get a lot of visitors.

These tips will help you to get more retweets and bring more traffic to your site or blog. Here are my 10 tips to get more retweets.

1. Try to get more followers

One of the best ways to get more followers is to put icon with a link to your Twitter microblog on your website. If your visitors will like your blog posts they can easily follow you on Twitter. That will potentially increase the number of retweets.

2. Ask for a retweet

A small request for a retweet directly in the message will also increase the chances that your followers will retweet your message. This may look like this: RT please.

Do not use it in every message. It’s much better to ask for retweet only for your best posts.

3. Give something back

If you want to get many retweets do not forget to retweet interesting links from your followers. If you want to get something from your followers you should give something back.

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]]>http://mikeshakin.com/twitter/10-tips-to-get-more-retweets-on-twitter.html/feed10 Ways to Get More Facebook Fanshttp://mikeshakin.com/facebook/10-ways-to-get-more-facebook-fans.html
http://mikeshakin.com/facebook/10-ways-to-get-more-facebook-fans.html#commentsThu, 23 Dec 2010 05:52:35 +0000adminhttp://mikeshakin.com/facebook/10-ways-to-get-more-facebook-fans.htmlEveryone wants more Facebook fans. Do you have a Facebook page? If you want to gain even more fans, you should improve your Facebook page and then follow these 10 steps.

1. Update your Facebook page regularly. Updating it on a regular basis is the way to gain more visitors and achieve higher rankings in the search engines.

2. Your status updates should not be too long. Keep in mind that Facebook status update has 420 character limit. Try to make it not longer than 100-140. I suggest you to follow Twitter’s 140 rule to keep your updates short and digestible.

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]]>http://mikeshakin.com/facebook/10-ways-to-get-more-facebook-fans.html/feedInterview with Gerald Weber, President of Search Engine Marketing Group, Houston, TXhttp://mikeshakin.com/interviews/gerald-weber.html
http://mikeshakin.com/interviews/gerald-weber.html#commentsWed, 15 Dec 2010 13:46:58 +0000adminhttp://mikeshakin.com/interviews/gerald-weber.htmlTodays guest at MikeShakin.com - Gerald Weber, president of Search Engine Marketing Group in Houston, TX. You can also follow him on Twitter - @the_gman. I appreciate that Gerald took time to answer my questions.

Gerald, please give our readers a bit of your professional background. How did you get into Search Engine Marketing?

I started out working for a local search marketing company doing sales. I was actually doing a pretty good job at selling SEO/SEM services to business owners, but the company I was working for kept changing the commision structure every time I started to hit the goals. In other words, they were trying to make sure I didn’t get too much money so they could keep their own wallets nice and fat. In December of 2005, I had enough of this treatment and decided to hang my own shingle and here we are today.This is the point I decided it was time to learn SEO

How many hours do you work daily and what are your daily tasks?

Well this varies really, but generally speaking, I try to keep my work day in the normal business hours range i.e. 9am to 5pm CST(about 8 hours). However, it’s certainly not uncommon that I find myself doing work at very odd hours. That’s the life of an entrepreneur, and I like it that way.

The way I keep myself on track is by making daily to do lists. I write out all of my tasks the day before, and then I just go through and check off each task as it’s completed. This keeps me focused and meeting my daily goals. Too many entrepreneurs overlook the importance of getting organized. Being disorganized can kill your business, no matter how good you are at what you do.

My daily tasks generally consist a large percentage of link building, Adwords management and communicating with my staff to ensure that other tasks are completed in a timely manner.

]]>http://mikeshakin.com/interviews/gerald-weber.html/feedWhy Long-Tail Keywords are Extremely Useful for SEOhttp://mikeshakin.com/seo/long-tail-keywords.html
http://mikeshakin.com/seo/long-tail-keywords.html#commentsMon, 15 Nov 2010 14:14:32 +0000adminhttp://mikeshakin.com/seo/long-tail-keywords.htmlLong-tail keywords are extremely useful for SEO. Basically long-tail keywords are opposite to head (or popular) keywords that more frequently searched by users. For example, “real estate” is a head term, but “affordable real estate in Brooklyn” is a long-tail keyword.

Long-tail keywords are especially effective in large ecommerce sites, where thousands of pages are indexed by Google and other search engines.

If you optimize your website pages for long-tail keywords, you should very quickly begin to see results from it in sales and traffic because this strategy is good for selling products. The important thing about long-tail that many niche products have a potential to generate a huge volume of sales. The long-tail keywords help to realize this potential for website owner.

Just take a look at Amazon or eBay. According to Chris Anderson’s research, Amazon.com makes 57% of sales from keywords outside of “head” terms. Search for some niche products and you will figure out that long tail keywords are really helpful for selling.

]]>http://mikeshakin.com/seo/long-tail-keywords.html/feedInterview with Dave Olson, Community Director of HootSuite Media, Inchttp://mikeshakin.com/interviews/dave-olson.html
http://mikeshakin.com/interviews/dave-olson.html#commentsSun, 14 Nov 2010 18:21:35 +0000adminhttp://mikeshakin.com/interviews/dave-olson.htmlToday’s guest at MikeShakin.com is Dave Olson, Community Director of HootSuite Media, Inc. Hootsuite is my favorite Twitter tool. I appreciate that Dave took time to answer my questions. I also appreciate help of Mike Abasov, Marketing Ambassador, HootSuite Media Inc., to organize this interview.

Thanks for talking with us, Dave. Let’s start with what Hootsuite is. In a world of Twitter clients, what does the new and improved Hootsuite offer that is different or better than any of the competing tools available?

HootSuite is designed for social media managers and agencies who need to manage multiple accounts collaboratively with teams. We also aim to make a tool which allows you to manage all aspects of a social media powered campaign in one dashboard. This means you can broadcast messages across networks, monitor conversations with searches, understand audience behaviour, analyze click stats and much more - all from one tool. In other words, it’s specifically designed for professionals using social media to power outreach efforts.

How long did it take to get Hootsuite from brainstorming to final product? What was the hardest part of work?

The product is never “final” per se, and it was only a few months from idea to first version. We iterate rapidly with new versions almost monthly and frequent releases of apps and platforms.

A few months after the first release, came HootSuite 2.0 which added the columns layout among other tools. This year, we’ve released team collaboration tools, a new HTML 5 version and too many tools (including influence measuring, Google Analytics integration and customer insights) to list. We’ve also started on a crowd-sourced translation project to add more languages. So we’re never done, and the hardest part is wanting to go faster, faster, faster…